Why Russia And The Us Will Not War At The End (Daniel 7)

Russia Sees Dialogue With Trump on Terrorism, Nuclear Weapons: Lavrov

by BILL NEELY and ALASTAIR JAMIESON

MOSCOW — Russia hopes for cooperation with Donald Trump's administration on "strategic stability" — including nuclear weapons — and the Syria war, foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said Tuesday.

The President-elect "wants every country to be responsible for its own development and this is an attitude we can relate to," he told reporters at a news conference, reiterating Russia's criticism of President Barack Obama's administration, NATO and the European Union.

"Donald Trump has unique views that differ from the views of his predecessors, both Democrats and Republicans," Lavrov said. "And at the core of it is the interest of United States as Donald Trump sees it. When we hear that his main focus is fighting terrorism, of course we will support it because this is actually what our American partners have been missing up until now."

His comments come after Russia-U.S. relations plunged to post-Cold War lows over the Ukrainian crisis, Syria and other issues.

Russia has also come to the fore in U.S. politics amid allegations that it hacked American institutions including the Democratic National Convention. Outgoing CIA director John Brennan said Sunday that Trump lacks a full understanding of the threat Moscow poses to America.

While being broadly positive about the relationship with the new administration, Russia's top diplomat did sound an ominous note on NATO escalation at Russia's borders, especially the Baltic states.

"If the NATO forces do not see any other place for themselves aside from the Russian-Estonian border, it means their Intelligence services are not doing a good job as they don't see what is happening in other areas," Lavrov said.

Syria Talks

Lavrov also said he would invite U.S. representatives to upcoming Syria peace talks in Kazakhstan brokered by Russia and Turkey.

"I hope our cooperation in regards to the Syrian crisis and fighting terrorism will be more successful than the one we had with President Obama's administration," Lavrov said.

Russia is a major backer of Syria's Bashar al-Assad, who the United States opposes, and has helped tip the balance of the war in the president's favor.

Lavrov made a point of mentioning Secretary of State-designate Rex Tillerson's comment at last week's Congressional confirmation hearing that "Russia is a threat but Russia is not unpredictable." That statement is important, said Lavrov.

Lavrov also referred to the alleged of Russian hacking of U.S. organizations, saying the claims were "false."

"We've seen some poor accusations that don't hold water, that since have been shrugged off by the British and their American counterparts who tried to jeopardize the new administration," Lavrov said.

Lavrov also took a swipe at what he called "the messianic obsession of the west" with exporting its values, such as democracy.

Russia isn't trying to export anything, especially not values, he said, adding that the concept of a unipolar world was "obsolete" because there are "many centers of power."

Russia Has Trump In A Compromising Position

Russians claim to have compromising info on Trump: CNN

Washington (AFP) - US spy chiefs told President-elect Donald Trump last week that Russian operatives claim to have "compromising" personal and financial information about him, CNN reported Tuesday.

Citing "multiple" unnamed US officials with direct knowledge of the meeting, CNN said the intelligence chiefs presented a two-page synopsis on the potential embarrassment for the incoming president along with their classified briefing on Friday on alleged Russian interference in the presidential election.

President Barack Obama was also briefed on the issue on Thursday.

CNN gave no details of what the so-called compromising information is, but said knowledge of its existence in Russian hands originally came from a former British MI-6 intelligence operative hired by other US presidential contenders to do political "opposition research" on Trump in the middle of last year.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation had been given the information in August, more than two months before the November 8 election, according to CNN.

"What has changed since then is that US intelligence agencies have now checked out the former British intelligence operative and his vast network throughout Europe and find him and his sources to be credible enough to include some of the information in the presentations" to Trump, CNN said.

The existence of the information on Trump in Russian hands has been rumored since before the election.

The rumors gained support when the then Democratic leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, said in a letter to FBI Director James Comey a week before the vote: "It has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government -– a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States, which Trump praises at every opportunity. The public has a right to know this information."

In the Friday briefing Trump was also told by the intelligence officials -- the heads of the Directorate of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency -- of allegations that supporters of his White House campaign had a "continuing exchange of information" with intermediaries for the Russian government during the election.

Asked about this in a Senate hearing Tuesday, Comey refused to confirm or deny that his agency was investigating such links.

US intelligence has concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an operation to meddle in the US election to hurt the campaign of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton with embarrassing hacked emails, and then to boost Trump when they thought he had a chance to win.

Trump has repeatedly dismissed the conclusion that Moscow influenced the election while expressing the need to smooth over bilateral relations deeply strained during the Obama presidency.

The Ten Headed Beast (Daniel 7:7)

Donald Trump blasts 'fools' who oppose good Russian ties

BBC

A billboard in MontenegroImage copyright Reuters
Image caption A billboard in Montenegro sums up a possible future policy direction

US President-elect Donald Trump has posted a series of tweets condemning those who oppose good relations with Russia as "'stupid' people, or fools".

Mr Trump vowed to work with Russia "to solve some of the many... pressing problems and issues of the WORLD!"

His comments came after an intelligence report said Russia's president had tried to aid a Trump election victory.

Mr Trump said Democrats were to blame for "gross negligence" in allowing their servers to be hacked.

In a series of tweets on Saturday, Mr Trump said that having a good relationship with Russia was "no bad thing" and that "only 'stupid' people, or fools, would think that it is bad!"

He added that Russia would respect the US more when he was president.

Mr Trump said frequently during his election campaign that he wanted to improve ties with Russia.

He has also repeatedly questioned US intelligence claims of Russian hacking in the election campaign.

Mr Trump tweeted on Saturday: "Only reason the hacking of the poorly defended DNC is discussed is that the loss by the Dems was so big that they are totally embarrassed!"

He was referring to the Democratic National Committee, whose email accounts were hacked during the election campaign.

Key findings from the report - full excerpts here:

Hacking into the email accounts of the Democratic National Committee and top Democrats
Using intermediaries such as WikiLeaks, DCLeaks.com and Guccifer 2.0 persona to release the information acquired from the hackings
Using state-funded propaganda and paying social media users or "trolls" to make nasty comments
After being briefed by intelligence chiefs on the report on Friday, the president-elect declined to mention Russia, but did say he had "tremendous respect for the work and service done" by those in the US intelligence community.

He also insisted the election outcome was not affected.

Trump Tweetwatch: 'I'm a big fan' of intelligence agencies

In the wake of the report, the US Department of Homeland Security announced that voting machines and other election databases would be classified as "critical infrastructure" and given more protection from cyber-attacks.

The unclassified part of the report says that the Kremlin developed a "clear preference" for Mr Trump.

A US report said Vladimir Putin had "ordered a campaign" to influence the US election
Russia's goals, the document added, were to "undermine public faith" in the US democratic process and "denigrate" his Democrat opponent Hillary Clinton, harming her electability and potential presidency.

"We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election," it said.

It gives no detailed evidence of Mr Putin's alleged role.

The report says Mr Putin liked Mr Trump because he had vowed to work with Moscow and the Russian leader had had "many positive experiences working with Western political leaders whose business interests made them more disposed to deal with Russia, such as former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder".

Mr Putin has called Mr Trump "a clever man" who should "quickly understand" his role.

Russia has not commented on the report but has previously denied the claims about influencing the election.

Last week, President Barack Obama ordered the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats from the US over the alleged hacking. Russia has said it will not reciprocate.

On Saturday, Mr Trump confirmed that Dan Coats, a previously vocal critic of Russia's annexation of Crimea, would be his new national intelligence director.

The Kremlin has yet to react to the report but state media rubbished it.

"The headline-grabbing accusations are based on TV programmes, posts on social networks and material from entertainment publications," Russia's most-watched TV station Channel One said.

Official state Rossiya 1 TV viewed the report through the prism of future relations between the two countries.

Its Washington correspondent Alexander Khristenko said the report was an "attempt to undermine the president-elect's legitimacy".

"Donald Trump himself remained critically-minded about the intelligence services' conclusions," he said, adding that "this is clearly not the sort of reaction from Trump that Washington hawks were counting on."

Russia Chooses The US President

Intel report: Putin directly ordered effort to influence election
Washington (CNN)The US intelligence community concluded in a declassified report released Friday that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an "influence campaign" aimed at hurting Hillary Clinton and helping Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

The campaign -- which consisted of hacking Democratic groups and individuals, including Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, and releasing that information via third-party websites, including WikiLeaks -- amounted to what the intelligence report called "a significant escalation" in longtime Russian efforts to undermine "the US-led liberal democratic order."

The report was the first official, full and public accounting by the US intelligence community of its assessment of Russian cyberhacking activities during the 2016 campaign and the motivations behind that hacking.
"We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump," the report said.

"Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election represent the most recent expression of Moscow's longstanding desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order, but these activities demonstrated a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort compared to previous operations," the report continued.

The report said Moscow used a variety of tactics in a bid to sway the outcome.

"Moscow's influence campaign followed a Russian messaging strategy that blends covert intelligence operations -- such as cyberactivity -- with overt efforts by Russian government agencies, state-funded media, third-party intermediaries and paid social media users or 'trolls,' " the report found.

The US intelligence community released several new pieces of information to support its conclusions.

It noted that in the final run-up to the election, when polls favored Clinton to win the election, Moscow shifted its campaign to influence the election to one aimed at undermining the validity of the electoral results.

"Before the election, Russian diplomats had already publicly denounced the US electoral process and were prepared to publicly call into question the validity of the results," the reported stated, adding that pro-Russian government bloggers had prepared a Twitter campaign on Election Night using the hashtag "#DemocracyRIP."

US intelligence officials also assessed "with high confidence" that the GRU Russian intelligence agency "used the Guccifer 2.0 persona, DCLeaks.com, and WikiLeaks to release US victim data obtained in cyberoperations publicly." The intelligence community also assessed "with high confidence" that the GRU provided WikiLeaks with the material they obtained from hacking the Democratic National Committee and top Democratic officials.

US intelligence agencies also noted in the report that the Russian influence campaign was not limited to the cyberhacking and release of private documents that drew headlines during the presidential campaign.

The report stated that the campaign blended cyberhacking intelligence operations with overt propaganda efforts carried out by state-owned media outlets and paid social media users.

The propaganda efforts included Russian state-owned media outlets like Russia Today and Sputnik casting Trump as "the target of unfair coverage from traditional US media outlets" as well as Russian propaganda officials casting Trump during the campaign as a victim of the US political establishment.

Meanwhile, the intelligence community noted that "RT's coverage of Secretary Clinton ... was consistently negative and focused on her leaked emails and accused her of corruption, poor physical and mental health, and ties to Islamic extremism."

Clinton's campaign first argued Russia was aiming to help Trump back in July, to which Trump's campaign called the comment "a joke." After the election, Clinton argued to donors that Putin got involved in the 2016 election partially due to a grudge against her, a view that's backed up in Friday's report.

"Putin most likely wanted to discredit Secretary Clinton because he has publicly blamed her since 2011 for inciting mass protests against his regime in late 2011 and early 2012, and because he holds a grudge for comments he almost certainly saw as disparaging him," the report said.

The Clinton campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday. But Jesse Lehrich, a spokesman for Clinton's campaign, expressed vindication Friday afternoon, tweeting:

"every day:

REPORTER: what about *this* @wikileaks email?

ME: part of an unprecedented foreign cyberattack!!!

REPORTER: so... no comment?"

every day:

REPORTER: what about *this* @wikileaks email?

ME: part of an unprecedented foreign cyberattack!!!

REPORTER: so... no comment?

— Jesse Lehrich (@JesseLehrich) January 6, 2017
Trump briefed

The report, which was commissioned by President Barack Obama, comes as Trump has continued to resist the US intelligence community's conclusions that Russia was responsible for the hacking and that it aimed to help his campaign.

Trump was briefed earlier Friday on the report by top US intelligence and law enforcement officials, and while he said he had "a constructive meeting," he declined to publicly agree with their conclusions.

Instead, Trump stressed that "there was absolutely no effect on the outcome whatsoever," which the US intelligence community asserted in its report it was not in a position to assess.

Trump did acknowledge in his statement the possibility that Russia could have been behind the hack, though he named China as well as a persistent cyberhacker.

The US intelligence community also warned in its report Friday that Moscow would likely continue to pursue cyberhacking campaigns to influence future elections.

"Moscow will apply lessons learned from its Putin-ordered campaign aimed at the US presidential election to future influence efforts worldwide, including against US allies and their election processes," it assessed.

The 17 US intelligence agencies first concluded in October that Russian intelligence, directed by the most senior Russian officials, orchestrated the hacking of Democratic Party organizations.

But since then, the US intelligence community said it had gathered additional information to make assessments of the motivations behind the cyberhacking operations: that the effort was aimed at undermining the US democratic process, hurting Clinton and helping Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

Babylon the Great Gets Some Payback

US interferes in nations' elections, accuses Russia of election hacking: analyst

Marcus Papadopoulos

Dr. Marcus Papadopoulos is the publisher and editor of Politics First magazine, a non-partisan publication for the British Government. He is also a political commentator regularly appearing in TV and Radio as an expert in Russia and the rest of the former Soviet Union, the former Yugoslavia, Syria and British politics. Papadopoulos holds a PhD in Russian/Soviet history from Royal Holloway, University of London. In an exclusive interview with Khamenei.ir, Dr. Papadopoulos talks about US claims on Russia's interference in 2016 presidential elections, US hositility towards Iran and US foreign policy. The following is the full text of the interview:

The US claims the Russians have interfered in the 2016 presidential elections; what’s your take on that?

- How ironic it is that the United States, which is the leading violator of international law on the international stage, through its constant undermining of the independence and sovereignty of countries across the world, is now accusing Russia of having interfered in the American 2016 presidential elections. So far, the Americans have not produced any credible evidence to support their assertion against Moscow - certainly no evidence that a proper court of law would consider as admissible. So my message to Washington is simple: Put up or shut up. Furthermore, the US has literally destroyed countries, has caused abject pain and suffering for millions of people and has turned countries into war zones, either through invading them, bombing them, supporting invasions by its allies, supporting secessionist groups, supporting subversive groups or supporting terrorist groups. Vietnam, Cyprus, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya and Syria are just some of the victims of American interventionism. And so, if a foreign country has interfered in the internal affairs of the US, then there is an old saying: What goes around comes around. I cannot say that I would have any sympathy for the US if another country did interfere in the American presidential elections.

During last decades the US has been involved in several attempts to interfere in foreign countries’ elections. Why is the US allowed to do so while it accuses Russia of having done the same?

- For decades now, the US has been interfering in the internal affairs of countries as a way to maintaining American global dominance, especially since the collapse of the Soviet Union, which paved the way for Pax Americana, a catastrophe for Russians but also for people in general. America is, without any doubt in my mind, a most dangerous imperial power, for it has the military might, economic might, political might and, importantly, cultural might, in terms of Coca-Cola, McDonalds and Hollywood, for instance. Washington is a superpower in soft and hard power. The American Empire is one of the most powerful and one of the most deadly in history. The US considers itself to be exceptional; indeed, as all American presidents say: "God bless America." American exceptionalism is at the core, along with economic motivations, for undermining other countries in the world, which is in the DNA of Capitol Hill.

When the attempts against Iran’s religious democracy in 2009 presidential elections foiled, the US officials clearly said we were supporting the unrest by all means required. Why has the US been so hostile towards Iran?

- Iran is a great country with a great history. Persia made a massive and positive contribution to the world, over thousands of years.  Persian history is simply splendid - one of the best in the world. US history is a pygmy in comparison to Persian history.  Iran is positioned in one of the most important geo-strategic areas in the world, and it is for this reason that the Americans want to dominate Iran. The Americans want to end Iran's independent foreign policy because this would make the US' domination of the Middle East even more entrenched. Two countries stand in the way of complete American hegemony in the Middle East: Syria and Iran. Washington is currently supporting Islamist terrorist groups in Syria in an attempt to overthrow the Syrian Government and replace it with a compliant one, while at the same time is constantly looking for an opportunity to depose the Iranian Government - and the 2009 Iranian elections were an example of this. Iran follows an independent foreign policy and one that does not bow down to US diktats. For Washington, that is an affront and a reason to act against Tehran. Iran must always stay vigilant of the US, regardless of who occupies the White House, and must always keep on developing closer ties with countries such as Russia and China, and, of course, Syria. Iran understands the malignant nature of US Foreign Policy and has immense experience in knowing how to keep the hand of American off Iranian soil. Donald Trump constitutes a serious threat to Iran, possibly even worse than that posed by Ronald Reagan. People of the world must come together to defend cultured Iran from the clutches of an incoming American President who can only be described as being totally devoid of morals and cultural enlightenment.

Putin Hands Trump The Presidency

NBC News: Intelligence officials say Putin personally involved in election hack
William Cummings | USA TODAYUpdated 11 hours ago

Russian President Vladimir Putin was personally involved in efforts to intervene in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, NBC News reported, citing two unnamed "senior U.S. intelligence officials."

New intelligence links Putin directly to the leaks from hacked Democratic National Committee emails, the officials told NBC News with "a high level of confidence."

Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with members of the WorldSkills Russian national team in the ...more

Alexey Nikolsky, epa

A high-level intelligence source said the campaign began as a "vendetta" against Hillary Clinton, NBC News reported. The goal grew into an effort to expose corruption in U.S. politics and to undermine America's international credibility, according to NBC.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov dismissed the report Thursday as "nonsense," according to Russia's TASS news agency.

"I was astonished when I saw it," Lavrov said. "I think, this is nothing but nonsense, there is not a chance that anybody could believe that."

Continue reading below

The NBC News report comes after last week's report from The Washington Post, also citing unnamed intelligence sources, which said the CIA believed that Russia not only interfered in the election, but did so with the intention of helping Donald Trump win. Although U.S. intelligence agencies agree Russia was behind several hacks during the campaign, including that of the DNC, the CIA is thus far the only agency reported to have reached the conclusion that the efforts were explicitly meant to benefit Trump.

On Oct. 7, the Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement on behalf of the U.S. Intelligence Community expressing confidence that the "Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations." The ODNI and FBI do not believe there is enough evidence to conclude the cyber attacks were intended to help Trump win, however.

Given Putin's authoritarian control over the Russian government, it is logical that any intervention in the U.S. election would have required the former KGB officer's approval. In the October statement, the 17 American intelligence agencies said, "We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities."

Russia's Payback to Babylon the Great

CIA Says Russia Worked to Get Trump Elected. Now What?

| Newser Mobile

(Newser) – The fallout from Friday night's "bombshell" report from the CIA that Russian hackers directly interfered with the US election in order to get Donald Trump elected continued Saturday. Here are seven things you need to know:

With Trump criticizing the CIA—rather than Russia—in the wake of the report, the New York Times reports he's opening an "extraordinary breach" between himself and the national security establishment he's bound to need during his presidency.

While mostly at a loss, Michael Tomasky at the Daily Beast has a few pieces of advice for what Democrats should do next: "Demand the release of the information. Demand a real investigation...The media needs to get the message that conservatives aren’t the only people who get pissed off."
In a "no-win situation for the GOP," some Republicans in Congress want to investigate Russia's involvement in the election against Trump's wishes. The Washington Post has four ways they could take on Russia, with or without the president-elect.

Harry Reid is calling for the resignation of FBI director James Comey, who he compares to J. Edgar Hoover and accuses of covering up information about Russia's activities to get Trump elected, the Guardian reports.

Pamela Kruger at Fortune points out that Trump did Saturday what he normally does when faced with a major negative story: spend the morning tweeting about something completely unrelated; Celebrity Apprentice, in this case.
Worried Trump will ignore Russian threats to US democracy when he takes office, Quartz reports President Obama is "racing against the clock" to get a full report on Russia's involvement in US affairs before he steps down in six weeks.

Meanwhile, John McCain says the close relationship between Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson—Trump's likely secretary of state—and Vladimir Putin "a matter of concern," the Hill reports. With Democrats needing only three GOP senators to vote against Tillerson, a McCain aide says a confirmation is unlikely. "Putin is a thug, bully, and a murderer, and anybody else who describes him as anything else is lying," McCain says.

Russia Hands Over Presidency to Trump

Bombshell Secret CIA Report Says Russia Aimed To Steal White House For Trump

The Huffington Post

A shocking secret CIA assessment has concluded that Russia interfered with the U.S. presidential election expressly to help Donald Trump win, according to an exclusive report Friday by The Washington Post.

Until now, intelligence sources have indicated that Russian hacking throughout the campaign that repeatedly exposed information overwhelmingly embarrassing for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was an effort to undermine Americans’ faith in their government.

Now the intelligence community has concluded that Russia was clearly after a Trump victory and manipulated information to that end, according to sources who spoke to the newspaper.

“It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected,” a senior U.S. official briefed on the CIA assessment told The Washington Post. “That’s the consensus view.”

The Trump camp has dismissed the report — along with the credibility of the U.S. intelligence community. “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” said a statement by the Trump transition team. “The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It’s time to move on and ‘Make America great again.’”

(The claim that Trump had won one of the “biggest Electoral College victories in history” is simply not true. He ranks 44th out of 54 electoral votes of presidents since the 12th Amendment passed, Mother Jones reports.)

It’s no surprise Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted Trump in the White House. Trump praised the former KGB leader throughout the presidential campaign. He even called Putin a “more effective leader” than President Barack Obama.

Leaked information through hacking operations traced by U.S. intelligence to Russia was eerily silent on Trump and the Republican Party throughout the presidential campaign. Yet the same operations exposed troves of secret, sometimes embarrassing, personal communication involving Clinton and internal planning by the Democratic National Committee.

U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia hacked the Republican National Committee but chose not to release the information, according to a report in the New York Times late Friday.

In addition, intelligence officials discovered breaches by Russian government-linked hackers into the voter registration databases of at least two states.

Links to hackers and the Russian government were detected by U.S. intelligence earlier this year. But Trump dismissed a Russian hand in the operations. He again this week blasted the intelligence findings, even before the latest assessment emerged, as politically motivated and not based on hard evidence.

“I don’t believe it. I don’t believe [Russia] interfered,” Trump told Time magazine in his “Person of the Year” interview released Wednesday.

“That became a laughing point, not a talking point,” he added. “Any time I do something, they say, ‘Oh, Russia interfered.’”

The hacking, he said, “could be Russia, it could be China. And it could be some guy in his home in New Jersey.”

Yet at one point during the campaign in July, he appeared to appeal to Russia for hacking help, saying: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing” from Clinton’s email servers. The seeming request for a foreign government to breach U.S. internet security sparked a storm of controversy, and Trump later insisted he was only being “sarcastic.”

In a September intelligence briefing, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) reportedly expressed suspicion about Russian links to campaign hacking. He hasn’t commented on The Washington Post’s report on the latest CIA information.

The chilling assessment that it’s “quite clear” Russia’s goal was to get Trump elected was shared with key senators last week in a Capitol Hill briefing, the Post reported. CIA officials cited a mounting body of evidence from several sources. Intelligence agencies have identified specific individuals with connections to the Russian government who are believed to have provided WikiLeaks with thousands of hacked emails, according to The Washington Post.

Obama has ordered a “full review” of Russian hacking in the campaign following pressure from Congress, the White House announced Friday. He expects to receive an intelligence report on any election interference before he leaves office. Congress will also be briefed on the report.

“We’ve seen in 2008, and this last election system, malicious cyber-activity,” Obama’s counterterrorism and homeland security adviser, Lisa Monaco, told reporters. “We may be crossing a new threshold, and it is incumbent upon us to take stock of that, to review, to conduct some after-action, to understand what has happened and to impart those lessons learned.”

This article has been updated to include new details on where Trump ranks in electoral votes of presidents.

Did The Russians Hack The Election?

Green Recount Effort Poised to Explore Whether Russia Hacked the Vote for Trump

Photo Credit: Image by Shutterstock, Copyright (c) Julius Kielaitis

By Steven Rosenfeld / AlterNet

November 26, 2016

Investigating Russia’s role in interfering and with possibly hacking the 2016 presidential election vote is at the center of the Green Party-led recount effort.

The recount entered a new phase Saturday, when both the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Donald Trump transition team issued dueling statements about the need to verify votes in the three states that gave Trump an Electoral College majority. But beyond their appearances, with Clinton’s campaign saying it would participate in the effort, was a remarkable development: the prospect that the recount will try to investigate the biggest unanswered question hanging over the election beside who won: did Russia take steps to hack the vote?

Trump called the recount a “ridiculous” effort by the Greens that was fleecing donors of the nearly $6 million raised by midday Saturday. But the statement by the Clinton campaign’s top lawyer, Marc Elias, noted in its opening paragraphs that the election, the Democratic Party, and their campaign was repeatedly targeted by the Russians.

“This election cycle was unique in the degree of foreign interference witnessed throughout the campaign: the U.S. government concluded that Russian state actors were behind the hacks of the Democratic National Committee and the personal email accounts of Hillary for America campaign officials, and just yesterday, the Washington Post reported that the Russian government was behind much of the 'fake news' propaganda that circulated online in the closing weeks of the election,” Elias wrote on Medium.com, then elaborating about their private investigative efforts to assess the impact of Russian interference in the campaign.

Going even further, the first recount petition filed by the Greens, in Wisconsin, primarily focused on Russian hacking, not on the more easily understood line of inquiry of different voting technologies reporting different margins of victory for Trump despite their locations. The Green's petition opens by stating they believe “an irregularity” has occurred affecting the entire state. It goes on to say that in August, “foreign operators breached voter registration databases in at least two states and stole hundreds of thousands of voter records” at the same time the email systems of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign were hacked and put online. It lists warnings by federal homeland security officials to states to take steps to protect these databases, and then lays out its theories. First, Wisconsin’s voting systems are aging and known to be susceptible to hackers, “including they can be breached without detection and even after certain security measures are put in place.” And that may account for “a significant increase in the number of absentee voters compared to the last general election. This significant increase could be attributed to a breach of the state’s electronic voter database.”

That summation and line of inquiry has been reported by AlterNet before. However, the Green’s petition went further to explain what they are going to be looking for as the recount ensues. The first piece of supporting evidence is an affidavit by J. Alex Halderman, a University of Michigan professor of computer science and engineering, and director of the Center for Computer Security and Society based in Ann Arbor. He was part of the team set up by California’s ex-Secretary of State, Debra Bowen, that reviewed the vulnerability of its electronic voting systems and led to the state banning the same machines used in Wisconsin.

Russia tried to breach voter registration databases in 20 states last summer, Halderman said, citing the Department of Homeland Security as his source. “Russia has sophisticated cyber-offensive capabilities, and it has shown a willingness to use them to hack elections elsewhere. For instance, according to published reports, during the 2014 presidential election in Ukraine, attackers linked to Russia sabotaged Ukraine’s vote-counting infrastructure, and Ukranian officials succeeded only at the last minute in defusing the vote-stealing malware that could have caused the wrong winner to be announced,” he wrote, referencing and submitting a June 2014 Christian Science Monitor article that described the hacks and averted tampering.

Not mentioned in the Green’s filing was Paul Manafort, who came aboard Trump’s campaign last spring and shepherded it through the Republican National Convention until he was forced to resign because of a multi-million-dollar cash payment from consulting in Ukraine, and he was working for the pro-Russian side of the June 2014 Ukranian election, the Washington Post reported last August. “Even with [pro-Russian Viktor] Yanukovych out of the country, the [New York] Times reports Manafort kept working in Ukraine with the president's former chief of staff to help keep the pro-Russian party in the political game. It worked. The party ended up being a significant influence in parliament.”

Halderman’s affidavit continued, saying the same vote tampering that occurred in Ukraine could have occurred in some of 2016’s presidential swing states:

"If a foreign government were to attempt to hack American voting machines to influence the outcome of a presidential election, one might expect the hackers to proceed as follows. First, the attackers might probe election offices well in advance to find ways to break into the computers. Next, closer to the election, when it was clear from polling data which state would have close electoral margin, the attackers might spread malware into voting machines into some of the states, manipulating the machines to shift a few percent of the vote to favor the desired candidate. This malware would likely be designed to remain inactive during pre-election tests, perform its function during the election, and then erase itself after the polls closed. One would expect a skilled attacker’s work to leave no visible signs, other than a surprising electoral outcome in which results in several close states differed from pre-election polling.”

America’s voting machinery is especially vulnerable to that scenario, Halderman said, noting that he personally has installed malware in electronic voting machines to achieve that exact result. Whether voting machines are connected to the internet “is irrelevant,” he said, which is directly applicable to Wisconsin, whose safeguards include keeping its voting machines offline, state election officials have previously told AlterNet. All it takes is one memory card to be inserted into the system at any point, he said, for such malware to be spread.

“This explanation is plausible, in light of other known cyber attacks intended to affect the outcome of the election; the profound vulnerability of American voting machines to cyberattack; and the fact that a skilled attacker would leave no outwardly visible evidence of an attack other than an unexpected result,” Halderman reiterated. “The only way to determine whether a cyber attack affected the outcome of the 2016 presidential election is to examine the available physical evidence—that is, to count the paper ballots and paper audit trail records, and review the voting equipment… Using the electronic equipment to conduct the recount, even after first evaluating the machine through a test deck, is insufficient. Attackers intending to commit a successful cyber attack could, and likely would, create a method to undermine any pre-tests… Voting equipment that might yield forensic evidence of an attack includes the voting machines, removable media, and election management system computers. Paper ballot, paper audit trails, and voting equipment will only be examined in this manner if there is a recount.”

This scenario of examining the entire voting system is not what the state of Wisconsin is envisioning when conducting the recount, according to a statement by the state election administrator, Michael Hass, on Friday, saying that the Green Party has filed for its recount.

“In a recount, all ballots (including those that were originally hand-counted) are examined to determine voter intent before being retabulated. In addition, the county boards of canvassers will examine other documents, including poll lists, written absentee applications, rejected absentee ballots, and provisional ballots before counting the votes.”

Haas said the Wisconsin Election Commission’s role in the recount is “to provide legal guidance to the counties during the recount, and to certify the results.” This is a new state board composed of partisan appointees by Republican Gov. Scott Walker, who disbanded the state’s former Government Accountability Board, which was comprised of retired state judges and was among the most highly respected election oversight panel in the country.

In other words, these preliminary and contradictory statements from the Clinton campaign, Green Party and Wisconsin election administrator show why the upcoming presidential recount is going to be controversial and headed into court at many steps along the way. It also shows that the Greens are taking the lead in advancing the one storyline the Clinton campaign did not get the media to heed—the extent to which Russia may have tampered with America’s voting machinery and tilted the result to a candidate who embraced Vladimir Putin.

“Because we had not uncovered any actionable evidence of hacking or outside attempts to alter the voting technology, we had not planned to exercise this option ourselves, but now that a recount has been initiated in Wisconsin, we intend to participate in order to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides,” Clinton counsel Marc Elias said on Saturday. “The campaign is grateful to all those who have expended time and effort to investigate various claims of abnormalities and irregularities. While that effort has not, in our view, resulted in evidence of manipulation of results, now that a recount is underway, we believe we have an obligation to the more than 64 million Americans who cast ballots for Hillary Clinton to participate in ongoing proceedings to ensure that an accurate vote count will be reported.”